His cry echoed back from the wooded slopes. Before the echo had stopped, the crunching of skates could once again be heard. The sobbing Gemmeran fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. Bert Brigden howled, threw away his sword and turned to flee. He slipped, fell down, and for a time he ran on all fours like a dog.
‘Rience!’
The magician swore and raised his hand. Both his hands and his head trembled as he chanted his spell. However, he was able to finish it. But not correctly.
His twitching fingers shot out a thin jet of fire that ploughed through and the ice broke the surface. But it did not break across the line, as it should have in order to block the approaching girl's path. It broke along the line. It opened the ice with a loud crash and black water gushed forth. The gap rapidly widened and ran towards Dacre Silifant, who was watching amazed.
‘Lie down!’ Screamed Skellen. ‘Flee!’
It was too late. The gap ran between Silifant's feet and expanded violently, breaking the ice up into large, glass-like pieces. Dacre lost his balance. The water drowned his cries. Boreas Mun fell into the hole and disappeared under the water. The kneeling Gemmeran and the body of Ola Harsheim also disappeared. Then Rience plopped into the black water, immediately followed by Skellen, who succeeded at the last minute to cling to the edge. The girl pushed off hard, jumped over the gap, landed with a splash in the thawing ice, and ran after the fleeing Brigden. A moment later a hair-raising shriek pierced Skellen's ears and echoed back from the edge of the forest.
She had caught up with Brigden.
‘Sir...’ groaned Boreas Mun, who had somehow managed to crawl onto the ice. ‘Give me a hand... Lord Coroner...’
Skellen ran to the edge and pulled him out, where he began to shake terribly. Then Silifant attempted crawl out, but broke the edge of the ice. He disappeared once more under water. But he was instantly up again, coughing and spitting. He pulled himself onto the ice with a superhuman effort. He crawled out and lay there, exhausted to the utmost. A puddle formed around him.
Boreas groaned and closed his eyes. Skellen trembled.
‘Save me... Mun... Help...’
Rience hung on the edge of ice, up to his armpits in the water. His wet hair lay close to skull. His teeth were chattering like castanets – it sounded like the haunting overture to a hellish Danse Macabre.
Skates crunched. Boreas did not move. He waited. Skellen trembled.
She was coming. Slowly. Blood flowed from her sword, leaving a drip line on the ice.
Boreas swallowed. Although he was soaked to the skin with icy water, he suddenly became terribly hot.
But the girl ignored him. She looked at Rience, who was trying in vain to get onto the ice.
‘Help me...’ Rience said through his gnashing teeth. ‘Save me...’
The girl slowed down and turned around on the ice with dance-like grace. She stood there with her legs slightly apart, holding her sword with both hands, steadily, across her hips.
‘Save me...’ stammered Rience, as he clawed his fingers into the ice. ‘Rescue me... And I'll tell... where Yennefer is... I swear...’
The girl slowly pulled the scarf from her face. And smiled. Boreas Mun saw the hideous scar and with difficulty repressed a scream.
‘Rience’ said Ciri, still smiling. ‘You wanted to teach me what pain is. Do you remember? With these hands. These fingers. With these? With which you are now holding onto the ice?’
Rience replied, but Boreas did not understand it, because the magician's teeth were chattering so much that articulate speech was impossible. Ciri turned around on the ice and lifted her sword with one hand. Boreas gritted his teeth, convinced that she would deal a death blow to Rience, but the girl only got momentum going. To the vast astonishment of the tracking detector, she ran away quickly, accelerated with sharp foot movements. She disappeared in the fog, and for a moment the rhythmic crunch of ice skates fell silent.
‘Mun... Heeellp... meee... out...’ Rience forced through his gnashing teeth, his chin on the edge of the ice. He threw both arms on the ice, trying to cling to it with his fingernails, but all of his nails had already broken off. He spread his fingers and tried, with palms and joints, to grasp the bloody ice. Boreas Mun looked at him and knew with a terrible certainty that...
He heard the crunch of ice skates at the last moment. The girl approached with uncanny speed, almost a blur before his eyes. She skated close along the hole in the ice, slipped past the tight margin.
Rience cried out. Then he choked on the thick, icy water. And then he disappeared.
Next to the ice hole, in the beautifully smooth trail of ice skates, blood was visible. And fingers. Eight fingers.
Boreas Mun vomited on the ice.
Bonhart galloped on the edge of the slope along the shore at a great rate, without worrying about the horse that could break its legs at any minute in the snow-covered holes. The frozen pine branches struck him in the face and lashed over his arms, and ice dust poured down his collar.
He could not see the lake, the whole valley was like a full of mist like a boiling cauldron.
But Bonhart knew that the girl was there.
He could feel it.
Under the ice, far below, a curious swarm of striped perch swam alongside a sinking object. The fascinating, blinking, silver box that had slipped from the pocket of a dead body floating in the water above it. Before the box reached the bottom and kicked up a mud cloud, the boldest perch even tried to touch it with their snouts. Suddenly, they scattered in horror.
The box was letting out strange, alarming vibrations.
‘Rience? Can you hear me? What is happening with you? Why have you not answered the last two days? I am asking for a report! What about the girl? You must not allow her to enter the tower! Are you listening? Do not let her enter the Tower of the Swallow... Rience! Answer me, damn it! Rience!’
Rience, of course, was unable to respond.
The slope stopped, the bank was flat. The end of the lake, Bonhart thought, I'm on the edge. I have cut off the little girl's way out. Where is she? And where is this cursed tower?
The fog curtain suddenly ripped and blew away. And as he looked up he saw her. She was directly in front of him, sitting on her black mare. A sorceress, he thought, she has some connection with this animal. She sent it to the end of the lake to wait for her there.
But that changes nothing.
I have to kill her. To hell with Vilgefortz. I have to kill her. First I'll make sure she pleads for her life... And then I kill her.
He cried, kicked his spurs into his horse, and went into a breakneck gallop.
And suddenly he realized that he had lost. That she had misled him.
Only a hundred and fifty paces separated them – but it was a hundred and fifty paces of thin ice. In addition, the curved surface of the lake was now to the other side – the girl, who was riding along the curve, was much closer to the end.
Bonhart swore, tugged at the reins, and drove his horse onto the ice.
‘Run, Kelpie!’
Under the hooves of the black mare splashed the frozen ground.
Ciri pressed against the horse's neck. The sight of Bonhart's pursuit filled her with dread. She feared this man. Just the thought of entering battle with him made her feel as though an invisible fist pressed into her stomach.
No, she could not fight him. Not yet.
The tower. Only the tower could save her. And the portal. Just as it did on Thanedd when the magician Vilgefortz was close behind her, even reaching out for her...
Her only salvation was the Tower of the Swallow.
The fog lifted.
Ciri pulled on the reins and suddenly felt a monstrous heat flood her. She could not believe what she saw. What was in front of her.
Bonhart saw it too. And cried triumphantly.
There was no tower at the end of the lake. There were not even the ruins of a tower, because there simply was nothing. Only a barely visible, hardly
rising hillock. Crowned by a barren cairn dotted with icy plant stems.
‘There you have your tower,’ he cried. ‘There is your magic tower! There you have your rescue! A pile of stones!’
The girl seemed to hear nothing and see nothing.
She directed the mare towards the vicinity of the little hill to the cairn. She raised both hands toward heaven, as if to curse the heavens for what had happened to her.
‘I told you,’ Bonhart yelled as he kicked his brown with his spurs, ‘that you belong to me! That you will do what I want! That no one will stop me! Neither men nor gods, neither devils nor demons! Nor and enchanted tower! You belong to me, witcheress!’
The hooves of the brown sounded on the ice.
The fog suddenly bunched together under the blows of a swirling wind that rose out of nowhere. His brown began to neigh, prance, and chomp his teeth at the bit. Bonhart leaned down in the saddle and pulled at the reins with all his force, because the horse was raging – her head tossed back and forth, as she stomped and slid on the ice.
Standing between him – on the shore between him and Ciri – a snow-white unicorn danced and reared up, shielding the girl.
‘Such tricks will not work on me,’ cried the bounty hunter, while he got the horse under control. ‘I am not scared by magic! I will catch you, Ciri! This time I will kill you, witcheress! You are mine!’
Again the mist clenched together and took strange forms. The figures were becoming clearer. There were riders. The nightmarish silhouettes of ghost riders.
Bonhart stared.
On the skeletal horses rode the skeletons of horsemen dressed in rust-eaten armor and chain mail, scraps of coats, and battered and corroded helmets that were adorned with buffalo horns or with the remains of ostrich and peacock plumes. The ghosts' eyes shown with a bluish glow from under the visors of their helmets. A tattered banner rattled. At the head of the cavalcade galloped a man armed with a crown on his helmet and a gorget on the chest, which showed through his opened rusty cuirass.
Away, it droned in Bonhart's head. Away, mortal. She does not belong to you. She belongs to us. Away!
One could not deny that Bonhart had courage. The ghosts could not frighten him. He overcame the horror and did not fall into a panic.
But his horse turned out to be less resolute.
The brown stallion reared up, began to prance a ballet on its hind legs, neighed, and jumped wildly. The ice broke under the impact of horseshoes with a penetrating crack, and the ice floes stood upright as the water shot up. The horse screamed and clapped its hooves on the front edge of the ice, which broke. Bonhart pulled his feet from the stirrups jumped off. Too late.
The water closed over his head. It began to hammer and to roar like a bell in his ears. His lungs were threatening to explode.
He was lucky. His feet met with something that surely must have been the sinking horse. He pushed himself and appeared with a flourish, spluttering and gasping. He grabbed the edge of the ice. Without panicking, he drew his knife, cut it into the ice, and pulled himself out. He lay there, breathing heavily, as the water dripped down from him.
The lake, the ice, the snow-covered slopes, the white-covered black spruce forest – all in one fell swoop was illuminated by an unnatural, deathly pale light.
With enormous effort, Bonhart rose to his knees.
Over the horizon blazed the deep blue sky in a dazzling corona of brightness. A dancing vortex of beams of light shot from the dome of light, from the sudden fiery columns and towering spirals. The fast-changing shapes of ribbons and draperies hovered in the sky, flashing, erratic.
Bonhart began to croak. His throat seemed to be bound by an iron garrote.
At the spot that had been just been nothing but a hillock and a cairn of stones, a tower now rose.
Majestic, willowy, smooth, shining, sculptured from a single block of basalt. In the few windows of the serrated peaks at the top the flickering fire of the aurora borealis flamed.
He saw the girl turn in the saddle to look at him. He saw her bright eyes and the line of an ugly scar on her cheek. He saw the girl driving the black mare forward, as they entered without haste into the blackness beneath the stone arch of the entrance.
And they disappeared.
The aurora borealis exploded into blindingly light whirls of fire.
When Bonhart could see once more, the tower was gone. There was only a snow-covered hillock, and a heap of stones dotted with icy plant stems.
Kneeling on the ice, dripping, surrounded by a puddle of water, the bounty hunter roared wildly, horribly. From his knees, he stretched his hands toward heaven and he cried, screamed, cursed, and reviled – men, gods, devils, and demons.
The echo of the cry rolled through the wooded slopes and ran across the frozen surface of Lake Tarn Mira.
The interior of the tower immediately reminded her of Kaer Morhen – an equally long black corridor behind the doorway, an equally endless abyss in alignment with the columns and statues. She could not understand how this chasm fit in the slender obelisk of the tower. But she knew that trying to analyze it made no sense – not in the case of a tower that sprung up out of nowhere, that suddenly appeared where nothing had been before. In such a tower, anything was possible, and you couldn't be surprised by anything.
She looked back. She did not believe that Bonhart had dared – or had been able – to follow her here. But she preferred to make sure of that.
The archway through which she was riding shone with a bright, unnatural light.
Kelpie's hooves clattered on the floor, which started to crack under the horseshoes. Bone. Skull, tibia, ribs, femur, pelvis. She rode through the middle of a giant ossuary. She was reminded again of Kaer Morhen. The dead should be buried in the ground... How long ago was that... At that time I actually believed such a thing... the majesty of death, respect for the dead... But death is just death. And a dead man is just a cold corpse. It does not matter where it lies, where his bones disintegrate.
She rode into the darkness, under arches, between columns and statues. The darkness began weigh on her like smoke. Intrusive whispers and soft sighs urged incantations in her ears. Huge doors suddenly flared up in front of her and opened. They opened one by one. Doors. An infinite number of heavy doors opened silently in front of her.
Kelpie's hooves rattled on the ground.
The geometry of the surrounding walls, arches, and columns was suddenly disturbed, so violently that Ciri thought it must not be real. It seemed to her that she was travelling through the interior of some impossible polyhedral body, a sort of giant octahedron.
The doors continued to open. But they no longer gave only a single direction. They opened up endless possibilities and directions.
Ciri began to see.
A black-haired woman who holds an ash-blonde girl by the hand. The girl is afraid, afraid of the dark, afraid of the her urgent whisper, horrified by the clatter of horseshoes she hears. The black-haired woman with the sparkling star of obsidian on her neck is afraid. But she cannot show it. She continues with the girl. It is her predestination.
Kelpie's hooves. The next door.
Iola the Second and Eurneid, in short coats, knapsacks on their backs, marching on a frozen, snow-covered road. The sky is deep blue.
The next door.
Iola First kneeling before the altar. Next to her is Mother Nenneke. They stare, their faces twisted in a grimace of horror. What do they see? Past or future? Truth or falsehood?
Above them both, Nenneke Iola – are hands. The outstretched hands of a blessing of a woman with golden eyes. The necklace of the woman is a diamond that shines like the morning star. A cat is on the woman's shoulder. A falcon is above her head.
The next door.
Triss Merigold adjusts her beautiful chestnut-brown hair that is tousled by wind gusts. But there is no escaping that wind, no protection from it.
Not here. Not on the top of the hill.
On the hillside below a lo
ng, endless line of shadows. Figures. They go slowly. Some turn to face her. Familiar faces. Vesemir. Eskel. Lambert. Coën. Yarpen Zigrin and Paulie Dahlberg. Fabio Sachs... Jarre... Tissaia de Vries.
Mistle...
Geralt?
The next door.
Yennefer, in chains, shackled to the wall of a dripping wet dungeon. Her hands are one large mass of clotted blood. Her black hair is matted and dirty... Her lips are cracked and swollen... But in her violet eyes, the will to struggle and resist is still not extinguished.
‘Mother! Hang in there! Hold on! I'll come to the rescue!’
The next door. Ciri turned her head away. With regret. And embarrassment.
Geralt. And a green-eyed woman with black short-cut hair. Both naked. Joined, rising together. Contributing to each other's pleasure.
Ciri gained control of her adrenaline compressed throat and promoted Kelpie. The hooves clattered. The darkness vibrates with whispers.
The next door.
Hail, Ciri.
‘Vysogota?’
I knew that you would succeed, my efficient lady. My brave swallow. Have you taken any harm?
‘I defeated them. On the ice. I had a surprise for them. The skates of your daughter...’
I was thinking about psychological harm...
‘I held back the revenge... Did not kill all that I desired to kill... I did not kill the Owl... Although he was the one who hurt and disfigured me. I controlled myself.’
I knew you would win, Zireael. And that you would enter the tower. I'd read about it. Because that's been described... It's all already been described... Do you know earns one his degree? One's ability to use sources.
‘How can it be that we can talk to each other... Vysogota... Are you...?’
Yes, Ciri. I am dead. Oh unimportant! More importantly, I learned what I sought... I know where those lost days went, what happened in the Korath Desert, how you disappeared from the eyes of your pursuers...
‘And how I came here, into this tower, yes?’
The elder blood that flows through your veins gives you power over time. And over space. Over dimensions and spheres. You are now the Mistress of the Worlds, Ciri. You are a powerful force. Do not allow worthless criminals to take and abuse for their own purposes.